My love affair with candles has been many years in the making. I remember my first home shopping trip to Ikea fondly. “ooh, I must buy some candles because I’m a grown up now”. It wasn’t long before my slight OCD meant this type of candle wasn’t going to work out for me. Why wouldn’t these flippin candles burn all the way to the edge?!
From then on, I went on a long journey mixing between artisan, high street and designer brands. A lot of this was driven by social influence, my perceived standing in society and my bank balance! Throughout this time, my demands and expectations of a candle have changed.
Fast forward a good few years, and with creative inspiration bubbling, I embarked on a course to understand how candles are made, what different brands put into their candles and, in some cases, what utter rubbish I was burning in my house. We were actually breathing in fumes that were potentially carcinogenic. More than that, my children were breathing in these fumes.
I spent many long hours researching this further and established that I wanted an alternative solution to this. I wanted a candle that burned cleanly and evenly. I wanted an amazing aroma, not a candle that “lost its smell”. And so, Solu was born.
Numerous iterations of what, in my husband’s eyes, were “the same candle”. I had ramekin dishes full of fragrances, a candle in product testing in every room of the house. Photos were taken in abundance to demonstrate to myself that these candles really did what I was asking of them.
There is only, and will always will only be, two ingredients in our products. Soy wax and fragrance oil. My ambition is to create a brand that symbolises affordable luxury. All of our products are hand poured in the UK and, if I have my way, no matter how big Solu gets, it will always stay this way.
Thanks for reading and welcome to the world of Solu!